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About Paul Matzko

Paul Matzko is a historian specializing in the intersection of politics and religion in twentieth century America. He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University and Princeton University; he is currently the Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the Cato Institute and host of a podcast about the future called "Building Tomorrow."

Author Updates

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University invited John Samples and I to contribute to an essay series discussing proposals for regulating the internet in order to save journalism, break apart Big Tech, and limit targeted advertising. Most of the participants were lawyers or journalists, with a baked in assumption that well-designed laws could reliably function as intended. It fell to John, who is a political scientist (and who has since been named to Facebook’s independent c

My latest article is the cover story for the January/February print edition of Christianity Today.
It started, quite inauspiciously, with a tweet thread that one of the editors asked me to expand upon. And then, a week before publication, the magazine’s editor, Mark Galli, wrote an op-ed calling for the impeachment of President Trump, kicking off a medium-intensity internet firestorm. Indeed, Franklin Graham, the son of Christianity Today‘s founder, evangelist Billy Graham, condemned

The Gospel Coalition posted my review of John Wigger’s new biography of infamous televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Here’s an excerpt, but do click through to read the whole thing.
The Bakkers proved adept at growing their audience. It was hard not to watch just to see what crazy stunt they might pull next, like when a live camel visited the set (and promptly peed all over the stage) or the time that Tammy Faye hosted the show from a merry-go-round (53). But their fundrais

I have a feature article coming out in the next issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly. I’m very happy with the journal. The editorial staff was professional, the peer reviewers were prompt, and the journal has an interdisciplinary audience of both political scientists and historians. You’ll have to ask your library to subscribe to the journal to get full access to the article, but I’ll tease the first page below.
Here’s the abstract:
President John F. Kennedy launched t

On September 4th, in anticipation of President Trump’s decision to sunset legislation protecting illegal immigrant minors from deportation, a group of evangelical leaders issued a public letter under the auspices of “Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration.” The letter supports Trump’s repeal of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), an executive order issued by Barack Obama.
The letter begins with shallow declarations of compassion for immigrants as well as a shout out to #alll

The Gospel Coalition recently posted my review of Christopher Lane’s new book on Norman Vincent Peale. Here’s the opening, but you can click through to read the full review.
When asked about his religious background during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump frequently mentioned Norman Vincent Peale. Peale, who died in 1993, was the most famous clergyman in America during the 1940s and early 1950s. When Trump was a child, his family regularly attended Peale’s Marble Co

I presented a paper at the American Historical Association’s annual conference last January. My paper, titled “Polish Ham, Talk Radio, and the Rise of the New Right,” illustrated the power of conservative radio with the story of a little known yet wildly successful 1962 boycott of Eastern European imports by conservative housewives. Afterwards, David Farber, a professor of history at the University of Kansas, asked me a particularly important question. Before I get to the question, I sho

“Make America Great Ag…er…Stand Up for America!”
On Election Day last week I lectured on the election of 1968 for my class at Penn State, “From Hippies to Yuppies: America in the Long 1960s.” I am hardly the first to note the many echoes of 1968 on both sides of the contest in 2016. The anger of Bernie Sanders’s supporters at the Democratic Party placing a super-delegate-sized thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton is an echo, albeit a pale one, of the protests that erupted in Ch

Rights: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images
Yesterday Hillary Clinton took to the stage in Reno, Nevada to criticize the Trump campaign’s ties to the alt-Right. She spoke of Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about Obama’s birth certificate, the anti-Semitic slurs that stream from his alt-Right supporters online, and the casual racism and misogyny he himself utters on a seemingly daily basis. Although Trump did not create the alt-Right, he has become the movement’s figurehead; white nationalists

Issue #1 – Note Center Article (Billy Graham Center Archives, NAE Papers)
I have an article in the latest edition of Fides et Historia, which is the journal of the Conference on Faith and History. You’ll have to subscribe or borrow a copy from your university library to read it in full, but I’ll give you a short excerpt.
Conservative Protestants in the early twentieth century described themselves as evangelical, fundamentalist, or

In the past few years, trust in traditional media has reached new lows. Many Americans disbelieve what they hear from the "mainstream media," and have turned to getting information from media echo chambers which are reflective of a single party or ideology. In this book, Paul Matzko reveals that this is not the first such moment in modern American history.

The Radio Right tells the story of the 1960s far Right, who were frustrated by what they perceived to be liberal bias in the national media, particularly the media's sycophantic relationship with the John F. Kennedy administration. These people turned for news and commentary to a resurgent form of ultra-conservative mass media: radio. As networks shifted their resources to television, radio increasingly became the preserve of cash-strapped, independent station owners who were willing to air the hundreds of new right-wing programs that sprang up in the late 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1960s, millions of Americans listened each week to conservative broadcasters, the most prominent of which were clergy or lay broadcasters from across the religious spectrum, including Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, and Clarence Manion. Though divided by theology, these speakers were united by their distrust of political and theological liberalism and their antipathy towards JFK. The political influence of the new Radio Right quickly became apparent as the broadcasters attacked the Kennedy administration's policies and encouraged grassroots conservative activism on a massive scale.

Matzko relates how, by 1963, Kennedy was so alarmed by the rise of the Radio Right that he ordered the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Communications Commission to target conservative broadcasters with tax audits and enhanced regulatory scrutiny via the Fairness Doctrine. Right-wing broadcasters lost hundreds of stations and millions of listeners. Not until the deregulation of the airwaves under the Carter and Reagan administrations would right-wing radio regain its former prominence. The Radio Right provides the essential pre-history for the last four decades of conservative activism, as well as the historical context for current issues of political bias and censorship in the media.

Noted scholars and advocates of liberty offer inspiring visions of a more libertarian world.

Regardless of our political commitments, we all want the world to be better. We want people everywhere to be healthier, happier, safer, and more prosperous than ever before. Political liberty―the freedom to live our lives as we want while affording others the right to do the same, free from the heavy hand of the state―is the best way to achieve that goal.

Visions of Liberty is more than just an introduction to the broad scope of political liberty. It will leave you with a strong sense―a clear vision―of what the application of genuine libertarian policies looks like in practice.

Our contributors take different approaches. Some look to the past, pointing out how things worked before government got involved. Others look forward, offering future histories that describe how things could play out if we make certain choices. But each of them shares the fi rm belief that when freed from the meddlesome and coercive hand of the state, people can do amazing things. Liberty unleashes our drive for ingenuity and sense of compassion. This radical vision of a world that might be is truly worth striving for.

Beginning with the legacy of Roger Williams, who in 1633 founded the first colony not restricted to people of one faith, The Lively Experiment chronicles how Americans have continually demolished traditional prejudices while at the same time erecting new walls between belief systems. The chapters gathered here reveal how Americans are sensitively attuned to irony and contradiction, to unanticipated eruptions of bigotry and unheralded acts of decency, and to the disruption caused by new movements and the reassurance supplied by old divisions. The authors examine the way ethnicity, race, and imperialism have been woven into the fabric of interreligious relations and highlight how currents of tolerance and intolerance have rippled in multiple directions. Nearly four hundred years after Roger Williams' Rhode Island colony, the "lively experiment" of religious tolerance remains a core tenet of the American way of life. This volume honors this boisterous tradition by offering the first comprehensive account of America’s vibrant and often tumultuous history of interreligious relations.